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Philosophical Approaches to the Concept

Sviatoslav Shachin

This article analyzes the concept of an Arctic circumpolar
civilization and focuses on contradictions inherent within the concept.
Some of these antinomies are the nomadic character of the traditional
Arctic civilization and the traditional academic approach
that takes a sedentarist perspective; the rich worldview of the Arctic
residents and its inadequate reflection in the rational paradigm
of cognition; and issues surrounding sustainable development and
the global crisis of humanity, which leads to instability worldwide,
including in the Arctic. The article proposes method of dialectical
synthesis for resolving such antinomies.

Ruy Llera Blanes

In this article, through a set of ethnographic vignettes from fieldwork
conducted in Angola since 2015, I discuss the political semantics of crisis and austerity,
and simultaneously outline an itinerary of a “traveling austerity” between
Portugal and Angola, exposing the interconnectedness and mutual binding of
both political and economic contexts. Invoking stories of migrant workers in Luanda
and the work of local “financial activists” protesting against financial inequality
in Angola, I question the relevance of national-based approaches to austerity
politics, explore conceptualizations of austerity beyond its “original,” mainstream
Eurocentric setting, and argue towards the necessity of analyzing transnational
intersections in the study of austerity.

Audit cultures and the weakening of public sector health systems

James Pfeiffer

Austerity across Africa has been operationalized through World Bank
and IMF structural adjustment programs since the 1980s, later rebranded euphemistically
as poverty reduction strategies in the late 1990s. Austerity’s constraints
on public spending led donors to a “civil society” focus in which NGOs would fill
gaps in basic social services created by public sector contraction. One consequence
was large-scale redirection of growing foreign aid flows away from public services
to international NGOs. Austerity in Africa coincides with the emergence of what
some anthropologists call “audit cultures” among donors. Extraordinary data collection
infrastructures are demanded from recipient organizations in the name of
transparency. However, the Mozambique experience described here reveals that
these intensive audit cultures serve to obscure the destructive effects of NGO proliferation
on public health systems.

Memories and Emotions of a Socialist Construction Project

Olga Povoroznyuk

The Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM), a railroad in East Siberia
and the Russian Far East, became the last large Soviet industrial project.
Its construction in the 1970s and 1980s attracted migrants from
across the USSR, who formed the bamovtsy, or group of BAM builders.
They share a history of working and living along the BAM and
constitute the majority population in the region. The article argues
that emotionally charged social memory of the BAM construction
plays the central role in reproducing and reinforcing the bamovtsy
identity in the post-Soviet period. Drawing on in-depth interviews
and focus groups, the article examines the dynamics of both individual
and collective remembering of the socialist BAM. It forms a
vibrant discursive and emotional field, in which memories and identities
are reconstructed, relived, and contested. Commemorative ceremonies
such as the fortieth anniversary of the BAM serve as forums
of public remembering and arenas for the politics of emotions.